“So?” I demanded.
“I matched the cloth. It’s the same as what was left of the clothes you wore to Chichén Itzá. They had some of it in evidence when they investigated the scene of your . . . your murder. Only someone got in there without being seen by anyone or any camera, and took it right out.”
Memory flashed at me, hard. The silent stone ziggurats in the night. The hiss and rasp of inhuman voices. The stale, reptilian scent of vampires. My faerie godmother (yes, I’m serious. I have one, and she is freaking terrifying) had transformed my clothes into protective armor that had probably saved my life half a dozen times that night without my even being aware of it. When they had turned back into my coat, my shirt, and my jeans, there had been little left of them but tatters and scraps.
Sort of like me.
Someone who had major issues with my death was killing people in my town.
Could it be my apprentice?
She had a thing for me, according to practically every woman I knew. I didn’t have a thing back. Yes, she was gorgeous, intelligent, quickwitted, brave, thoughtful, and competent. But I’d known her when her bra had been a formality, back when I’d begun working with her father, one of the very few men in the world I hold in genuine respect.
There was darkness in Molly. I’d soulgazed her. I’d seen it in more than one of her possible futures. I’d felt it in the black magic she had worked, with the best of intentions, on fragile mortal minds.
But though she’d fought tooth and nail at Chichén Itzá, beside the rest of us . . . she wasn’t a killer. Not Molly.
Was she?
People could be driven to extremes by the right events, the right stakes. I’d bargained away my future and my soul when I had needed to do it to save my daughter.
And I was Molly’s teacher. Her mentor. Her example.
Had she let herself be driven to extremes at my loss, the way I had been to the potential loss of my daughter? Had she turned aside from everything I’d tried to teach her and let herself slide down into the violent exercise of power?
Worse, Molly was a sensitive, a wizard whose supernatural senses were so acute that surges of powerful magic or the emotions that accompanied life-and-death situations were something that caused her psychic and physical pain. It was something I had barely even considered when I dragged her along to Chichén Itzá with me for the largest, most savage, and deadliest brawl I had ever personally participated in.
Had the pain of participating in the battle done something to my apprentice? Had it left her with permanent mental damage, just as the gunshot wound she’d received must have left her a permanent scar? Hell, it didn’t require any supernatural elements at all for war—and that was what Chichén Itzá was, make no mistake—to screw up young soldiers who found themselves struggling to stay alive. Throw in all the mystic menace on top of it, and it started to seem a little bit miraculous that I’d gotten as far as I had while remaining mostly sane.
I didn’t want to admit it or think about it, but I couldn’t deny that it was possible that my apprentice hadn’t been as lucky as I had.
“Hey,” Butters said quietly. “Harry? You all right?”
“That’s . . . kinda subjective, all things considered,” I answered.
He nodded. “No one wanted to be the one to tell you the details. But Murphy’s pretty sure. She says that if she was still working as a cop, she’d be convinced and digging as hard as she could to turn up enough evidence to let her put the perp away.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I get what she means by that.” I swallowed. “Why hasn’t she?”
“We need Molly,” Butters said. “She’s made the difference between happily ever after and everyone dying in two raids against the Fomor.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Okay. It’s . . . something I’ll start processing. But I’m not saying that I believe it. Not until I talk to her about it. See her reaction with my own eyes.”
“Right,” Butters said, his voice gentle.
I eyed him. “Murphy wouldn’t want you telling me this.”
He shrugged. “Murphy’s not full all the way to the brim herself some days. What she’s been doing . . . It’s been hard on her. She’s gotten more and more guarded.”
“I can imagine.”
Butters nodded. “But . . . I’ve always been kind of a trust-my-instincts guy. And I think you need to know this stuff.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We’ve got some other problems, too.”
His tired, worried face lifted into a sudden grin. “Of course we do. Harry Dresden is in town. What’s that?”
I put Sir Stuart’s pistol into the voluminous pocket of my duster and said, “A cannon. Someone gave it to me.”
“Huh.” His voice turned casual. “Could something like that hurt me?”
I grinned and shook my head. “Nah. Ghost-on-ghost action only. Assuming I’m able to make it work in the first place.”
The snow had stopped falling, and Butters turned off his windshield wipers. “What’s it like?”
“What is what like?”
“Being . . . you know.”
“Dead?”
He shrugged a shoulder, betraying his discomfort. “A ghost.”
I thought about my answer for a moment. “Everything in my body that used to hurt all the time got better. I don’t feel hungry or thirsty. Other than that, it feels a lot like being alive, except . . . my magic is gone. And, you know, hardly anyone can see me or hear me.”
“So . . . so the world is the same?” he asked.
I shivered. “No. It’s chock-full of all sorts of weird stuff. You wouldn’t believe how many ghosts are running around this place.”
Even as I spoke, I turned my head to watch two wraiths glide down the sidewalk as the car passed them. I frowned. “Including one of you, Bob.”
Bob the Skull snorted. “I’m not mortal. I don’t have a soul. The only thing waiting for me when I cease to be is entropy. I can’t leave a ghost.”
“Then how come I saw a floating skull with blue eyelights helping attack Mort Lindquist’s place last night?”
The skull just stared for a moment. Then he suggested lamely, “You were high?”
I snorted. “Can’t be many things like that running around,” I said. “What do you know?”
“I have to think about this,” Bob said in a rushed tone, and his orange eyelights winked out.
Butters and I both stared at the skull.
“Huh,” Butters said. “I’ve never seen anyone make him shut up before.”
I grunted. Then I said quietly, “Scared the hell out of me, seeing that. Thought something had happened to him.”
“He’s fine,” Butters said. “Best roommate I ever had.”
“I’m glad you’re taking care of him,” I said. “He wouldn’t do well alone.”
“It’s not a big deal, right?”
“What isn’t a big deal?”
“If there’s an Evil Bob out there,” he said. “I mean . . . it’ll just be another nerd like this one, right? Only with a black hat?”
The orange eyelights winked back on, and Bob said, “Hey!”
“Butters . . . Bob is spooky strong,” I said quietly. “Knowledge is power, man. Bob has a lot of it. When I accidentally flipped his switch to black hat a few years ago, he nearly killed me in the first sixty seconds.”
